Posted by finelinebob on September 8, 2006, at 0:54:33
In reply to Conservation of CONSONENTS! lol » finelinebob, posted by Racer on September 8, 2006, at 0:21:24
> lol I loved that one, also learnt back in linguistics 101...
We had some linguistics prof of some reknown back in Ann Arbor who would start "linguistics 101" the same every semester...
He ask, "who knows what a prefix is?", see all the hands raise, and say, "yeah, a syllable or group of syllables added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning" or something like that.
Then he'd ask, "who knows what a suffix is?" ... hands would go up, and he'd answer his own rhetorical question again.
Then he'd ask, "who knows what an infix is?"
As usual, no hands would raise. And he'd nod and say it's a syllable or group of syllables added to the MIDDLE of a word to alter its meaning, and say that he wasn't all that surprised no one knew what it was since we have no infixes in English.
"unless," he'd say, "you include abso-fscking-lutely and in-fscking-credible and..."
poster:finelinebob
thread:683581
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060901/msgs/684147.html